


Running Late

by feeding_geese



Series: It Can be Good Again [1]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-30
Updated: 2012-10-30
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:50:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feeding_geese/pseuds/feeding_geese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peeta remembers some things and is upset that he doesn’t remember others, but all in all, a productive day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running Late

**Author's Note:**

> Don't own THG, blabbity bloo

I’m running late.  
It’s a slow morning. Not a bad morning, and not a very, very good morning, which can be very nice, but a regular morning, which is the best because, in our damaged way, it smacks of normalcy.  
I wake up first. I have a mile long list of things to do before that late afternoon train rolls in. I don’t get up, though. Neither of us gets up without the other. So I lie there and smell the morning through the open window and run my thumb absent-mindedly over one of her more prominent scars, going through the pantry in my head.  
Every muscle in her small body tenses at once and releases with a sigh and I know she’s up. I pull a strand of dark hair out of her mouth.  
There’s still fire behind those Seam eyes, but they look softer, like hazy mist instead of sharp shadows.  
“Just the one, I think,” I brush the fading burn scar on her forehead.  
“It wasn’t even that bad,” she nods, thinking back. “First arena. Tracker jackers.”  
“Those aren’t my favorite.” Sometimes I think I can feel them buzzing in my brain, releasing venom that’ll make me go mad again.  
“Not as bad as parachutes.” She sits up and raises her arms high above her head in a long stretch. There’s a scar on her shoulder, small in comparison to the others, that I hate. From when the pod exploded in the Capitol. And I tried to kill her. It’s one of the first ones she tried to erase, but even if it were to vanish tomorrow, I’ll always know it’s there.  
“You better get up,” she pats my chest. “You’ve got a big, big, big day ahead of you!” Effie called last week, and ever since, Katniss has been doing imitations of her thick, Capitol accent. In some cases, at very in opportune times.  
Getting up is a little painful. At some point in her sleep, she wrapped one or both legs around me, putting pressure on my bad leg. My non-existent leg. She’d feel bad if she knew, so I power through it and follow her into the bathroom.  
It still amazes me the quickness with which we grew back together. I was expecting small changes over years, if at all, but I had been back a month. She pulled me in from the rain and wouldn’t let me leave. We had finished eating dinner, and I was getting ready to go home when she asked me to stay, staring at her plate and pushing the leftovers around with her fork. I was really hesitant. I hadn't had an incident since the Capitol, but in the same bed, with her sound asleep, how easy would it be for me to kill her? I stayed on the couch for the first few nights, only going up when she screamed, but she would creep downstairs and climb in close, so there was no point. I tried to get her to keep a bow and arrow ready. That sparked our first real fight. Shouting at each other until we both collapsed in tears and spent the night in the corner of the room, huddled together in our pain and fear.  
We compromised. Dr. Aurelius had sent me a series of syringes with a knock-out drug that she keeps on her bedside table. She’s never had to use it, but I still keep up with the expiration dates, just in case.  
We get in the shower together. It’s an excuse to be close, and sometimes leads to distractions, but ultimately it’s just easier. There are still spots that are difficult, painful to reach with new or damaged skin. A free pair of hands turns an ordeal into nothing. You wash my back and I’ll wash yours. It’s also a good place to inspect for signs of recovery. Scars that are fading, hair that’s resprouting, physical wounds that are closing or reopening.  
The hair on her head is getting thick again. My eyebrows grew back darker, which makes her laugh for some reason. The best part of the morning, besides the distractions, is the scar cream. It arrived on the train one day not from Dr. Aurelius, but from Octavia. She said that she’d had nightmares of our fire mutt skin, the patchwork of new and old that made up Katniss below the neck. Within weeks of daily applications, the seams between grafts began to fade and the scars began to lighten. They haven’t disappeared completely, but Octavia swears that in a few years’ time, we’ll look practically new again.  
I cover her entire back except for her shoulder. I don’t want to touch that spot and she doesn’t make me. There are scorch marks, the remnants of torture, that she doesn’t like to touch at all. But they’re on a spot of my back that I can’t reach. She tends to rub extra hard there, trying to erase them. She won’t let me get rid of the scar on my thigh that looks like a fish. She’s attached to it.  
On a normal morning, we go downstairs to the kitchen hand in hand, her silent hunter’s feet and my heavy tread made louder by the plastic and metal attached just below my knee. I set out as much food as she wants before going out back to light the huge oven, feeling her eyes on me through the window. If it was a bad night, she’ll whistle out a signal for me to return. If it was a very bad night, I’ll take her with me.  
This morning, I flip on every burner and fire up the kitchen oven. The big oven can wait a while. She opens the window to let the hot air out and Buttercup in. She scoops him up, but he struggles out of her grasp to settle on the floor and clean the blood off his muzzle. He’s already eaten.  
She tears off a hunk of the cheese bun she’s eating and pushes it in my mouth as I crack eggs. Our old agreement from the cave still stands: she kills, I cook. Today she’s hoping to bring down some larger game in addition to the squirrels I requested, so I make enough to pull her through a long day. She clears a space on the counter and hops up before I can cover it with a bowl. I’d always prefer her up on the counter next to me, even when it limits my work space. Up on the counter is happy, and in the past year I’ve seen more happy out of her than I ever thought possible. I wonder if she asked Prim for permission like I asked Pop.  
“You are good and excited,” she laughs, feeding me a berry she had snatched from the batter. I don’t want to say anything about family or best friends, so I smile and pop the batter spoon into her mouth. If life continues like this, without any major bumps or bruises, I’ll ask her to marry me next month. If she says no, I’ll bide my time and rebuild.  
We eat in our usual routine. I tell her everywhere I’ll be going that day, and she does the same. If we’re going to pass the same spot at different times in the day, we’ll leave signs. Flowers or crusts or stones. One day she left me a rabbit’s eye.  
After a good hour has passed, we realize that we are stalling. It’s the worst part of my day, when she and I go our separate ways. Goodbyes are less painful with the knowledge that the other one is definitely coming back, but they leave me with an empty feeling that I can’t entirely shake until I hear her open the front door.  
The kisses make it easier because they’re my favorite kind, and at first they were difficult to come by. Not the sad, desperate ones that come with tears and bad memories, or the deep, slow-burning ones that leave tiny bruises, although those are fun to get and give. It’s the small ones I like best. The ones that only say “I love you” in a simple, everyday way. “I love you today and I’ll love you tomorrow.”  
So when she slings her game bag over her shoulder and stuffs her pockets with buns, I stop working to begin the difficult process of saying goodbye. We stand there sighing for a moment until she shrugs and makes the first move, wrapping her arms around my neck and giving me a small, lingering kiss. It makes me so unbelievably happy, that she puts her arms around me because she loves me, not because I keep the nightmares away, and kisses me because she wants to instead of has to.  
“Don’t be gone too long, okay?” I kiss her temple where she used to get headaches. She pulls away a little.  
“Big game takes time. If Thom’s out today, he can help.” Now that it’s legal to hunt, it isn’t unusual to see others taking game. Katniss taught Thom herself, putting up with my sighs and stupid jealousies. Thom reminds me of Gale, and old habits die hard. She raises her eyebrow at me, exasperated. “I didn’t say anything when Livia Pruce came home.”  
“You kicked her feet out from under her!”  
“She tripped.”  
I decide not to push it. “I don’t care about the deer. Im swinging by the Hob and there’s a delivery from 11 coming in.” She reaches up and gives my earlobe a rough yank.  
“I should’ve left you by the stream,” she says around a kiss that turns the threat into honey. Slowly, her arms drop to her sides. “Bye.”  
“Bye,” I whisper, little childlike pangs of sadness following her out the door.  
I try to shake it off. There’s a lot to do and less time to do it in. At least she seems to be having a good day. If she’s in a good mental place, it’s easier for me to be as well, and I really need a good day today. I’ve just started scrubbing the first pot when I hear her footsteps racing through the backyard. Before I can look outside, she’s jumped on the windowsill, reached inside, and pulled me into a kiss so deep that my hands slip into the dishwater and splash the countertop. When she finally lets go to breathe, her fingers are still tangled up in my hair, waiting to see if I’ll pull her inside and race her upstairs. Honestly, it is an option. So it’s very difficult for me to suck in a slow steady breath and gasp out, “squirrels.”  
The look on her face makes me worry that I’ll never get touched ever again. She can’t hold it, though, and her face breaks in that goofy smile that I rarely see.  
“See if there’s any lamb. I want lamb stew. ” I nod, because frankly I’m amazed that I was able to get “squirrels” out. She kisses the tip of my nose and cuts through Haymitch’s yard as he’s feeding his geese.  
“You two are disgusting. That’s what you should’ve played for the cameras.”  
“Shut up, Haymitch!” she smiles, waving to us both. He turns to me.  
“Seriously. Disgusting. It’s difficult living next to the both of you.”  
“So move,” I shrug with a smirk that makes him stomp off to the far side of the yard. 

I clear my head of kisses and smiles and the taste of pancake batter in my mouth. I had a pretty good plan going, but when the time comes to start executing it, I second guess myself. I know what to do with the squirrels once I get them, and there are a half-dozen other things to prepare. But there was something special. Something I made only for her birthday, and I can’t for the life of me remember what it is. I run through the bakery menu, but I know it won’t be there. I try not to let the sadness creep in too far when I wish as I do a dozen times a day that my father was here. Or Madge. Madge knew what it was. We made it together once, as a surprise. It must have strawberries.  
“Haymitch!” I lean out the window. “Do you still have anymore strawberries?”  
“I do,” he pops the top off of his first bottle of the day. “But it’ll cost you.”  
“How much?” He takes a long pull.  
“Close your windows at night.”  
I hear Marta, our neighbor on the other side, let out a sharp laugh. But the afternoon train is not going to stop for my embarrassment.  
“Deal.”  
I’ve got the strawberries now, but I still have no idea what to do with them. There’s a spot in my brain where that memory lives. I just can’t access it. There are no set patterns to the gaps, like I knew Loam’s favorite color, but not his name, or that he was Delly’s brother. The Capitol wanted to twist my perceptions of Katniss, but you can’t expect injecting venom into someone’s brain to be an exact science. It’s not like they really cared how much they messed me up, as long as I would do the job. My nails are digging into my palms. I can feel myself bleeding. I could really, really use Katniss right now. She does this thing—sits on the floor with me and cradles my head to her breast and sings the Valley Song until I calm down. She’s softer than everyone thinks she is. Not in a fragile way, although she can be fragile, too. In a kind, sweet way that she doesn’t want anyone to see. Sometimes even I have a hard time reconciling the girl who shoots squirrels through the eye with the one who holds me at night.  
She’s not here. She won’t be here for hours. So I sing the song to myself, forcing my brain to remember the words and the melody. After three rounds, I feel like I can move again. This day is loaded with delays I don’t need and it’s frustrating me. I need to stop thinking about things I can’t remember and do what I can. The position of the sun tells me I have less than four hours. There are no clocks in our house, just the digital alarm for her pill, a small hourglass in the kitchen and the big hourglass next to the bed, for when I need to keep track of seconds.  
For the first time this morning, I actually get to work. I light the oven out back and when it’s good and hot, load it with an assortment of loaves. One or two are for tonight, but I want to get a head start on the orders for this week. I’m taking tomorrow off. I throw together a lemon cake so fast that it angers me a bit. How did this recipe survive while those damn strawberries nag at me from the end of the counter? I slam the oven door more out of spite than anything else. “Angry at lemon cake.” There’s a fun one for Dr. Aurelius. I’ve blown through my list faster than I thought I would, so I putter around the house for a while until the sand tells me to go to the oven. Then I dig out my key and head out while the cake cools.  
I open the door and try to remember the last time I was here. Two months ago, when we decided it was foolish to live in one house and keep my stuff in another. She was shocked at how much painting I actually did. How many of them were of her. It was embarrassing and, I’m guessing on her end, pretty creepy. She didn’t say anything for a long time until we finished packing everything up.  
“Why do you do that?” She wouldn’t look at me. “Paint me better than I am?”  
“I paint you as you are,” I shrugged, hefting a box up onto my shoulder. “You just don’t see it.”  
This place never really felt like it belonged to me. Unlike Katniss, I didn’t want my family here, didn’t want my mother making backhanded comments about the Seam, reminding Katniss that her tourniquet had cost me my leg. Becoming a victor was my ticket out and I grabbed it. Now I wish I had moved them. If they had been in the Victors Village, they might have made it out of 12.  
Even though we cleaned it well before shutting it up, The place is dusty. Stale. I can’t let anyone into this sad, empty house. I throw the windows open and sweep the dust outside until the place looks new. I climb the stairs to the room where I battled sleep alone, spent nights awake trying to stare through Haymitch’s house to her room on the other side. I don’t like this room, but it’s not mine anymore.  
I feel better when I’m in our house again. It smells familiar. The cake’s ready to frost. I scowl at the strawberries. Even more when I immediately remember that she likes snapdragons. I can’t quite remember what they look like, though, so I have to go to the book. I recognize my own hand in the drawing. It’s surreal to think that, less than three years ago, there was a me who could draw that flower from memory.  
I lose myself a little in the decoration. So when Marta pokes her head through the kitchen door, I jump.  
“You’ve got forty minutes till that train, hon.” I clean myself up the best that I can and put out every flame in the kitchen and out back. I wrap a few rolls in wax paper and head for the station.  
I take a detour by the meadow, to see if there’s a message for me. The fence has been rebuilt, mostly to keep wild animals out, but the electricity and barbed wire are gone and there’s a gate anyone can open to get into the woods. A half dozen pieces of paper stick out of the chain links. A lot of people leave notes for family members hunting and gathering in the woods here. I’m not looking for paper. Further down the line there’s a burned out oak where she likes to leave things. Today it’s a snapdragon—I must’ve told her at some point. I trade it for one of the rolls with a smile. No one else will take it. They all know it’s for her.  
My foot won’t stop tapping as I wait for the train to pull in. I’ve written to her every week and talked to her every other day, but that doesn’t change the fact that the last time I saw her, I was more or less insane. She saved me, the way she always saved me.  
Delly had always been my best friend, my strongest support, and the biggest nag when it came to talking to Katniss Everdeen. I always ran to her house to avoid a beating, and she cleaned my wounds when my punishment eventually came around. When I returned from the first arena, Delly was the only one who knew how dejected I was, the only one I trusted to keep that pain secret.  
“I don’t believe it. I watched every minute of the whole gruesome thing and I know what I saw.”  
“I was there, Delly, in the arena and afterwards, and it wasn’t real! It was a survival strategy she had worked out with Haymitch. She told me so on the way home.”  
“Then she doesn’t know, either. The way she looked when she was sleeping—you can’t fake that. And there was this one kiss, when her head started bleeding, I thought they were going to have to cut to a different tribute!” I thought back to the cave. I knew the one she was talking about, the one that felt really good, better than the others. I thought she probably kissed Hawthorne like that all the time and shook the red from my face.  
“I’m just going to have to get through it. Along with everything else.”  
“I know what I saw. If you shut yourself off and give up now, I’ll never forgive you. The Victory Tour’s coming up soon. Why don’t you try just talking to her?”  
Words catch in my throat as the train pulls in. How much have we both changed? We had an easy friendship in town, will it be too difficult to breach everything we’ve been through? Working through my hijacking was an emergency situation, what will our friendship be like on a day to day basis?  
She calls my name in a high-pitched squeal and my fears vanish. Suddenly we’re back In the schoolyard and she’s running at me to share her lunch. She jumps up into my arms and we hold onto each other for a long while. We pull back and examine each other. She’s thinner, paler, harder, but the smile is all Delly. Life can’t break a Cartwright.  
“You look so good!” She’s holding my face in her hands. “You’ve got your old eyes back.”  
“Most of the time.” Her smile becomes troubled. “I mean, no relapses! Dr. Aurelius says my progress is good. I’m good.” She turns her head, still holding my face.  
“Loam! Stop hiding and come over!”  
When he steps out from behind the pillar, I hardly recognize him. He must be fourteen by now and hit a growth spurt. He’s still thin and wiry, but he’s almost as tall as I am. I remember teaching him to tie his shoes and carrying him on my shoulders. In no time, he’s going to outstrip me. He shuffles forward, his light hair hanging over his eyes. When he speaks, his voice cracks in odd places.  
“I wanted to visit you in the hospital, but Delly wouldn’t let me.” I put my hand on his shoulder.  
“She was right, Loam. That wasn’t me in there. It was scary. But I’m me now. Pretty much.” He nods. The three of us stand in the station, holding each other and crying and laughing until we realize that none of us is leaving. We’re home.  
“So things are still good?” she asks as we stock up at the Hob. “Between the two of you?”  
“What, since last week?” I laugh.  
“Things change. It wasn’t that long ago that I’d have to remind you who you were each day.” Delly’s put in more hours towards my recovery than any of my doctors. The only one who’s done as much to heal me is the girl in the woods, hunting our dinner. “Better than I could hope for, actually. It’s weird, being happy.” I pull the snapdragon out of my back pocket. “Here. She left this for you.” She smiles as she twirls the stem between her fingers.  
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen one!” A grin creeps along her lips. “So you owe me something.” I have no idea. “‘You were right, Delly…about the cave…’”  
“Okay. You were right, Delly,” I laugh. “About everything.”  
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?”  
She pauses when we stop in front of the house.  
“I thought you were living with her. You told me you were living with her.”  
“I am. I don’t live here.” I press the key into her palm. “You do.”  
“Oh, Peeta…”  
“Geez, Delly, would you stop crying? It’s okay! I’m just sorry you have to live next to Haymitch!” The thought of Delly, the eternally optimistic, living next to constantly grumpy Haymitch made Katniss laugh so hard she had the hiccups for an hour. I admit that I’m interested in seeing how things shake out.  
I want to let them settle in, but everything else is at our house, so I drag them two houses down, excited. The moment we step inside, their mouths begin to water. I remember the food in 13, or what passed for food.  
“You guys want to eat?” I smile.  
They agree in unison. Then Delly hesitates.  
“Shouldn’t we wait for Katniss?”  
“Delly,” I brace both hands on her shoulders. “You are my best friend. You and Loam are my family. And I am going to stuff you so full of food tonight that you’ll have to roll home. From now on, we always get enough to eat.”  
We’re halfway through a dill loaf when the door opens. I shoot out of my chair to meet her. She smells like wet leaves and tall grass and tastes a little like sourdough and feels like home. Her game bag is heavy when she slips it on my shoulder.  
“I got your damn squirrels,” she smiles at the corner of my mouth.  
“What about the deer?” She sighs and rolls her eyes.  
“Too many people in the woods today. I didn’t want to go too far out.”  
“Well Magda had plenty of lamb,” I pull a pine needle out of her hair. She grabs one of my hands, inspecting the small cuts on my palm with concern. “Just a little one,” I try to sound reassuring. “It passed.” If we stand there longer, she’s going to make me go into detail, and I really dont want to tell her I spent most of my day angry at berries. “Come inside and say hi.”  
Delly jumps out of her seat and hugs her tightly. Katniss doesn’t know what to do with her hands. She rarely even touches anybody in 12 except me and Haymitch. She does better with Loam, who nods a greeting shyly.  
The dinner conversation is not nearly as awkward as I was expecting. Katniss wants to know about 13 after Coin’s assassination. Delly tells us that it was the closest to chaos she had ever seen in the district.  
“I thought they had a contingency plan for everything,” she ladles out another bowl of the squirrel stew—a favorite—and then, still feeling guilty about food, passes it over to Loam. I fill another bowl for her. Katniss watches her, curious.  
“Is it weird for you, too?” She examines the bread she’s using to sop up the lamb. “Eating like this? We still feel weird.” I like when she says “we.”  
“A little.” she casts her eyes to the table. “I know it’s difficult to believe, but we never ate very well at home. Mother was horrible at cooking, but we’d never dream of wasting food, so we ate all she could give. Unless Peeta snuck us something, Until we were moved to 13, I don’t think we ever ate anything that wasn’t burned or raw in the middle.” It had taken me a while to convince Katniss that, although we weren’t as impoverished as the Seam, no one in town lived well. It was just a different kind of suffering. Katniss feels bad for stirring up memories, even though she was just making conversation. I rub Delly on the shoulder.  
“Take all you want, Delly. Everyone’s eating better here. You can keep your own garden and the Capitol is working to give livestock out to anyone who wants it. Paylor wants more self-sufficiency and trade between districts. Like it used to be, I guess.”  
I tell her that, while the town square is being rebuilt, people are setting up shop in their homes. She and Loam were pretty competent cobblers before 13, and she’s a decent seamstress, too. It shouldn’t be too hard to get them started. She doesn’t like the implication that I’ll pay for the set up.  
“Why not? Money only goes so far up here. It’s mostly Hob rules: barter and deal.”  
“Then deal for it,” Katniss says into her tea. “Your set up for some repair work and tailoring. My boots need to be resoled and some of his shirts don’t fit right. We’ll go in fifty-fifty. “It’s a suitable arrangement for Delly and they shake on it, my sister and the girl I love.  
She tears up again when I pull the cake out of the ice box. Katniss turns a little red. I’m confused until I remember the last time I baked a cake for us. It was for her birthday, filled with honey and cinnamon and berries and painted to look like the meadow. She tackled me and we didn’t get to taste it until the next morning. I’m not helping when I kiss her temple as I set the plate in front of her. She jabs a finger hard into my rib. A slow, mischievous smile creeps over Delly’s lips.  
“You know he’s got a sensitive nerve, don’t you, Katniss?” She shakes her head. Two Hunger Games, a Victory Tour, and months of intimacy and she still hasn’t come across it. I immediately regret picking Delly up from the station. “Behind his right ear. It makes his whole body twitch.” Katniss smiles at me in a way that makes me very uncomfortable. Maybe I’ll sleep at Delly’s tonight.  
With their bellies full, the Cartwrights are getting sleepy. We’re yawning, too. Katniss starts piling dishes in the sink, waving off Delly’s offer to help.  
“I’ll make him do it in the morning.”  
I tell them to come over for breakfast when they get up, warning them that Haymitch will be there. Katniss can barely hide a smile of anticipation. Delly hugs her again, and this time she returns it awkwardly. She shakes Loam’s hand.  
When we’re walking back to their house, just the three of us, I apologize.  
“I got some strawberries, to make that dessert for you. But I couldnt remember what it was.”  
She thinks for a minute. Then her eyes light up. “It was a shortbread. The shortbread your father made in the bakery. But you put strawberries on it. “  
“No, it can’t be that.”  
“Yes! That’s it! Oh, cream! You’d put whipped cream on it. Shortbread with strawberries and whipped cream.”  
“That’s it? That was your big birthday treat I can’t remember?”  
“Well you started making it for me when we were nine,” she laughed. “You could barely make cakes yet.”  
“I didn’t make anything more, I don’t know, special? Later on?”  
“That’s what I wanted, Peeta. That was special.”  
We stop at her door. She tells Loam to go on inside and pick out a room. Before he leaves, he throws himself at me for a big hug. Then detaches himself and slinks inside.  
“Well, Peeta Mellark,” she sighs. “Not exactly where I pictured myself one year on, but I’m happy to be home with you next door again. Feels normal. Except you’re happy, which is better.”  
I think of the damaged girl who loves me waiting at our house. Brushing seeds and pollen out of her hair. Pulling off her dusty leggings. Trying to figure out how she’s going to get to that spot behind my ear tonight. When I close the windows and have to tell her about Haymitch’s deal, Hopefully she’ll be too distracted thinking of a way to get back at him to remember my twitchy nerve. Delly smiles.  
“You can tell Katniss she’s welcome for that information. “  
“I forgot how evil you are.”  
“That’s always been your problem, Peeta,” she brushes a long, dark hair off my shoulder. “You trust girls.”  
“It hasn’t steered me wrong yet,” I smile, pressing my lips to her cheek. “Happy birthday, Delly.”


End file.
